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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Site Update Incoming

Site Update Incoming

by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)|  January 27, 201710:48 am| 49 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Previous Site Maintenance

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WordPress just released a pretty important security update which I’m about to apply.

Besides that, I’m still working on a number of smaller issues such as buttons for mobile site, better video embeds for live events, adding comment counts to next/prev post buttons, and some instructions so that commenters can put tweets properly in comments without having to paste just the text content. There are also a few user-reported issues (look at the post from Wednesday that lists some other issues I’m tackling).

That said, these things are fixed:

  • Back button
  • Read More links
  • Jump to bottom/top buttons for desktop view of site

So I’m going to do the WP update and, assuming the site still works well, take care of a few real life things.  I’m leaving this post so that any issues can be noted here and hope to be back in two or so hours to review any other issues, requests, or suggestions from  this post.

As always, thanks for your patience and support.

Updated to say: sorry for stomping your post Tamara, but this update is important.

Another update: I’m backing up all the files first, so that will make the site a little slow for the next 10 minutes until it’s done. Then I’ll perform the update, and we should be good-to-go.

 

Final note: update performed, all is well. Will enable mobile site buttons after lunch and tweak mobile site settings.

 

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Previous Post: « Charlotte
Next Post: More Thoughts on Routine Resistance »

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    January 27, 2017 at 10:52 am

    Thank you, Alain. Happy Friday. Thanks for keeping us online and safe.

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    January 27, 2017 at 10:56 am

    PS: I get the safety pin, but what does the black and white logo represent? Resistance to Trump, I guess, but where did it come from and what is it? Is it based on an Islamic symbol??

  3. 3.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 10:57 am

    @Elizabelle: It’s something one of the other Frontpagers uploaded; it’s the Rebellion logo from Star Wars.

  4. 4.

    Another Scott

    January 27, 2017 at 10:59 am

    @Elizabelle: I had a question about that too, the first time I saw it here. It’s from a Star Wars movie. The safety pin is a similar “protection” meme, and they were combined after the election. Hollywood Reporter has more.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who realizes there will probably be 30 other explanations before he posts this…)

  5. 5.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    January 27, 2017 at 11:07 am

    Star Wars and Princess Leia becoming emblems of the anti-Trump movement was a very happy, unexpected development.

  6. 6.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 11:08 am

    And here we go..backup done, time to push update button.

  7. 7.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 11:11 am

    Update done. Return to you normal blog-related activities.

  8. 8.

    jeffreyw

    January 27, 2017 at 11:17 am

    ..and I woke suddenly, glad that this has been just a dream!

    What?

  9. 9.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 27, 2017 at 11:36 am

    @Another Scott: It looks the like it is inspired by the Sikh symbol.

  10. 10.

    HeartlandLiberal

    January 27, 2017 at 11:41 am

    Sigh. I have not updated my personal WordPress blogs in 12 months or more. I suppose I need to put that on my agenda. Thanks for the reminder. Thanks for your work on this blog, which remains an oasis of non-alternative facts.

  11. 11.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 11:48 am

    @HeartlandLiberal: Yeah,,,there’ve been many updates, but a major one that I applied earlier this week had some major security issues that needed to be patched tout-suite since we’re a popular blog that has some nasty “fans”.

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    January 27, 2017 at 11:49 am

    Loving the “down/bottom of page” button. Had not realized how much I rely on it. Thank you.

  13. 13.

    amk

    January 27, 2017 at 11:51 am

    @Alain the site fixer:

    we’re a popular blog that has some nasty “fans”.

    rushyans? assange? … oh, no. it’s, bannon, spicer & co, isn’t it?

  14. 14.

    Aleta

    January 27, 2017 at 11:55 am

    Maybe someday our little park on the river will have a statue representing people like you Alain, instead of the Civil War soldier with the knitted pink hat on his head.

  15. 15.

    catclub

    January 27, 2017 at 12:08 pm

    Shall I try posting with a pdf link?

    That has recently just been dropped. Is that normal?

    ETA: I just tried and it was dropped.

    Next I will try a normal link.

  16. 16.

    FlyingToaster

    January 27, 2017 at 12:08 pm

    @amk: It’s the usual bunch of “script kiddies” — glibertarian trash who live in either their parents’ basement or the luxury condo near the uni and have nothing better to do than try to crash liberal websites. And mmorpg sites. And hospital portals. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  17. 17.

    catclub

    January 27, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    normal link post

    so my link to https pdf links gets dropped.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    January 27, 2017 at 12:17 pm

    Will there be top/bottom buttons on the mobile site?

  19. 19.

    Another Scott

    January 27, 2017 at 12:26 pm

    @catclub: I used to have no issues with PDF links. Let’s try this one: Big Science Has a Buzzword Problem (4 page .pdf).

    Worky? Yup. It seems to.

    Maybe it’s some forbidden word in your URL?

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  20. 20.

    Mike J

    January 27, 2017 at 12:30 pm

    @Another Scott: Wonder if naked links are still working.

    https://twitter.com/PattyMurray/status/825032103473606662

  21. 21.

    Jeffro

    January 27, 2017 at 12:31 pm

    Rampell op-ed finally up on WaPo: Trump’s government looks an awful lot like a badly run business

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    January 27, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    Fingers crossed. It can’t be worse than today’s edition of the ongoing Drumpf shitshow.

  23. 23.

    Ruckus

    January 27, 2017 at 12:36 pm

    @Jeffro:
    So, he is, as we expected, doing exactly only what he knows to do. Fuck up everything.

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    January 27, 2017 at 1:08 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    I get the safety pin

    That safety pin is driving me crazy. The part that’s supposedly piercing the SW resistance logo is actually the back of the pin, which is clear when you look at the clasp end.

    First world issues….

  25. 25.

    scav

    January 27, 2017 at 1:19 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Think of as constructed so with the pin arranged so that more things can be attached and saved. It’s not self-contained, not out just to save itself, to hold itself together: it’s also reaching out.

  26. 26.

    Mike E

    January 27, 2017 at 1:20 pm

    @jeffreyw: some kid keeps shaking his snow globe!

  27. 27.

    Mel

    January 27, 2017 at 1:21 pm

    Thanks, Alain, for all that you do here. Have a wonderful weekend.

  28. 28.

    debbie

    January 27, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    @Jeffro:

    He’s running it like a hostile takeover. Figuratively the halls of government will be strewn with corpses.

  29. 29.

    Spanky

    January 27, 2017 at 1:25 pm

    From my Book o’ Faces feed:

    From an EPA staffer:

    “So I work at the EPA and yeah it’s as bad as you are hearing:

    The entire agency is under lockdown, the website, facebook, twitter, you name it is static and can’t be updated. All reports, findings, permits and studies are frozen and not to be released. No presentations or meetings with outside groups are to be scheduled.

    Any Press contacting us are to be directed to the Press Office which is also silenced and will give no response.

    All grants and contracts are frozen from the contractors working on Superfund sites to grad school students working on their thesis.

    We are still doing our work, writing reports, doing cancer modeling for pesticides hoping that this is temporary and we will be able to serve the public soon. But many of us are worried about an ideologically-fueled purging and if you use any federal data I advise you gather what you can now.
    We have been told the website is being reworked to reflect the new administration’s policy.

    Feel free to copy and paste, you all pay for the government and you should know what’s going on. I am posting this as a fellow citizen and not in any sort of official capacity.”

    If you share, please do so with copy and paste.

  30. 30.

    Mike J

    January 27, 2017 at 1:30 pm

    Trump has done the impossible. He makes Theresa May look good, if only in contrast to how stupid he looks.

  31. 31.

    SiubhanDuinne

    January 27, 2017 at 1:30 pm

    @scav:

    Such a generous, giving little safety pin!

  32. 32.

    hovercraft

    January 27, 2017 at 1:30 pm

    So a couple of times I’ve posted about this clueless woman I work with, yesterday we were talking and I was telling her about the massive grift the shitgibbon and his family are currently engaged in, like the doubling of Mar-a-Lago membership fees, the demand foreign governments stay at his DC hotel which is suddenly sold out. Any hoo she replied that the demand probably went up because he won, so it was the market driving the rate hike. I pointed out that the entire family is trying to monetize the presidency, from Melania hawking her jewelry, to Ivanka selling her clothes, to the boys selling access to their father. Her reply was that all politicians sell access, (she mentioned the Lincoln bedroom) so I said to her the difference is that they are raising money for campaigns and for the party, they are not personally pocketing the money. Her reply was that she’ll have to check it out for her self, she doesn’t like to rely on hearsay, like she just hates Joy Behar because she just says stuff that’s just not true. She is an American, and she supports the president. So today I was telling her about Charlotte and Michael and then about LAO, and Walter, and BJ, so she was saying she’d check it out since she loves animals, I warned her that ye we love animals here, but it’s more politics than pet blogging, and given how she feels about Joy, be warned, but we do provide sources for what we are pissed about. Her response made me go off on her, she went into “both siderism” nonsense, and said by the way she doesn’t really follow politics, she’s just not political, she just supports the leaders of our country. She was trying to placate me, to say that she’s not partisan, she is neutral, and they all do it. I said that she is the problem, people like her who ignored everything that went on for the last two years, who voted for change, something different, and now keep being surprised at what he’s doing. You didn’t pay attention, now you keep saying he’ll get better, his aides will calm him down, anyone who’s paid attention the last couple of years would know by now that no one tells him what to do, no one puts bay in the corner. That is what you people who liked the idea of change did. Do you have any idea how much of the federal government is discretionary, how much is defense, SS, and Medicare? Until you drastically reduce those three things, you will never reduce government spending in any meaningful way. You people bitch about the schools, roads, the DMV and property taxes, the property taxes are what pay for those things, if you keep cutting them , they will only deteriorate further, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. People like you are responsible for what happens over the next four years, you choose to ignore everything going on all around you, then casually walked into the booth and voted for “change”, well now you have it, lets see how you like it.

  33. 33.

    SiubhanDuinne

    January 27, 2017 at 1:31 pm

    @Mike J:

    I didn’t watch, but I listened. And yes, yikes, the PM came off 1000% better.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    January 27, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    @Mike J:

    While Trump was ticked whenever Hillary called him Donald, he used May’s first name rather than her title.

  35. 35.

    Miss Bianca

    January 27, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    @hovercraft: whoa. *blink* *blink*

    Is her jaw up off the floor yet?

    @Alain the site fixer: Alain, thank you so very much for all the work you do on this blog! You are the best!

  36. 36.

    debbie

    January 27, 2017 at 1:37 pm

    @hovercraft:

    My rants never last that long because I can feel my blood pressure rising.

  37. 37.

    Ruckus

    January 27, 2017 at 1:49 pm

    @hovercraft:
    I think this is the only way to deal with people who don’t actually want the responsibility of being a citizen. They are at fault for the shit-gibbon, they voted for change without actually knowing or understanding what change they were voting for. Except of course being against the black man, because any white man will be better than him. Well the jokes on all of us, not only was he better, he was a fucking lot better. But they can’t admit that, to them no black person can be better than any white person and no proof you provide will change that. But they aren’t racists, no you can’t call them that because being a racist would be a fault and they can’t have faults, they are white.

  38. 38.

    scav

    January 27, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: And, it can still use its pointy little end to stab things that deserve it, all the while keeping itself firmly attached to the larger objective.

  39. 39.

    Ella in New Mexico

    January 27, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    @hovercraft: Jesus, that’s gonna be an awkward work relationship for awhile. ;-) loljk

    I am just going keep shoving the grave reality of our current situation in the faces of the people who stupidly believed all the pap and lies in the face of real facts. I’m also letting people who didn’t think Trump would win anyway and didn’t want to vote for Icky Hillary because they heard she’s a crook every single thing they brought us.

    I also think it’s particularly powerful to personalize it to their particular situation, eg., the 26 year-old who will no longer get her IUD covered and is all “what the heck? Those things are SOOO expensive!!” who I heard say she didn’t bother to vote. Or my gay niece who was influenced by her loony-tune parents–who also accept and love her, which is weird–to vote Trump. Lots of targeted “wake the fuck up look what he did today” stuff for those two, lemme tell ya.

    It’s just one, small part of the giant deprogramming project we all must engage in in addition to the rest of the shit that’s gonna save America….

  40. 40.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 2:07 pm

    @Aleta: Not me. John built the community, he deserves acclaim.

    For that we all owe him thanks. Think of him like a founder of a small community in the mountains 2 hundred years ago. That town, humble as it might have been at first, offered shelter, safety, and community so people moved there and stayed there and told their friends and like-minded folk. And eventually you have a place with an identity, part of the world. Let’s just not steal the head off his statue, nor melt down purloined gold into the town cross.

  41. 41.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 2:07 pm

    @catclub: dropped as in, it used to work and doesn’t now?

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    January 27, 2017 at 2:10 pm

    @scav: SD – good catch!

    scav – You’re right. It was “manufactured” that way, but unless there’s another safety pin on the back it will be hard to attach to clothing Unless it’s built into the clothes! ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    scav

    January 27, 2017 at 2:17 pm

    @Another Scott: Soooooo……, it’s a network of like-minded safety pins, all taking care of each other while building the larger net (some busy holding, some free to defensively poke). So, self-organizing and functional, not a mere badge of allegiance.

    (eta: or the back is just velcro)

  44. 44.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 2:25 pm

    @FlyingToaster: don’t fool yourself. There are some organized, semi-skilled groups of activists/shitheads. They have incentives to do bad things ($, promotion, acclaim, power, lulz), and they’ll begin messing with the media and the left as soon as they get over the glee of Trump being in charge. Once they realize he’s unpopular and kinda dumb/wrong on details as well as being weak and somewhat incompetent, their defensive mechanisms will kick back in and they’ll be spreading fake information and hacking.

    I expect that to be soon because he came in with poor crowds, lied badly multiple times about it, and in general is not being the amazing competent ur-Man . Mostly, thanks to the women (and men) who marched, and the Mexican Presidents and people, people are publicly NOT bowing down to Hair Twitler.

    As for BJ, I suspect we’ll be doing some significant buckling down. We’re already doing well having a good hosting company who knows their stuff. They ward off DDNS and other attacks so we usually see just a slowdown.

    I’m still quite spooked by Democratic Underground having been taken down for so long during election day and weeks afterwards. If DU, here, Talkingpointsmemo, DailyKos, LGF, LGM, and a few others had also been down, I’m not sure what I would have done – not having one of my main news feeds was disorienting enough!.

    Begun, the First Internet War, has.

  45. 45.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    @debbie: in just a bit! I’m just working through this list then I tweak the mobile site.

  46. 46.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 2:28 pm

    @Another Scott: I wonder if it’s a htto vs httos issue for the pdf?

  47. 47.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 2:32 pm

    @Miss Bianca: So bummed about Over the River!! Yet another reason to hate the Trump administration! (hopes you are not a ROAR member…)

  48. 48.

    Alain the site fixer

    January 27, 2017 at 2:33 pm

    Ok, all done. Now to add buttons to the mobile site.

    Not going to do this today. Their solution isn’t optimal and there’s a plugin they referred me to which looks perfect and awesome. But I don’t want to try something new at 3 Friday afternoon with a headache building. So I’ll do this Monday – I’ll replace the current up/down arrows and the new solution is better and will work and look the same on desktop or mobile sites.

  49. 49.

    Another Scott

    January 27, 2017 at 9:55 pm

    @Alain the site fixer: Dunno. Let’s see.

    Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (9 page .pdf)

    Well? That seems to work, also too. Dunno.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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